


Name the stars with me

by lemonadesoda



Series: And I don't think you hate this as much as you wish you did [9]
Category: A Hat in Time (Video Game)
Genre: Dadtcher, Fluff, Gen, Oh the Humanity AU (A Hat in Time), cameos from Mustache Girl and Cooking Cat, oth!au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-12 20:27:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29390532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lemonadesoda/pseuds/lemonadesoda
Summary: I’ve shown you the keyframes, now here are the in-betweens. The little things matter. You see, love is in the details.
Relationships: Bow Kid & Snatcher (A Hat in Time), Hat Kid & Snatcher (A Hat in Time)
Series: And I don't think you hate this as much as you wish you did [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1999939
Comments: 9
Kudos: 59





	Name the stars with me

**Author's Note:**

> Two updates.  
> Associated doodle: https://doodledrawsthings.tumblr.com/post/617825354094100480

> _ Walk through rain with me, soak the sun with me. Lose control, let go. Catch the snow with me, feel the cold underneath your feet, ‘cause I know you’ll hold me. _
> 
> _ -Leddra Chapman, 'Picking Oranges' _

Subcon Forest is alive. It pulses and breathes with every creak and subsidence of its deep-delving roots. Snatcher knows its contours and textures, the cracks and the thorns, has spent his centuries tracing them. It is impossible to spend every waking hour in a place and resist stepping to its rhythm. Though it has been years since the light of sun and moon have pierced through the shroud of winter that smothers the sky, the trees still lean up and flames swell as the ambient heat of the daylit earth permeates the air and then, as night falls on the outside world, they recede in exhalation and coat the forest with mist.

It used to burn in the place his ribcage would have been. He could melt into its shadows and survey the forest’s breadth through thousands of eyes. He reached down with the roots and felt the vibrations within the earth until they coalesced into a replica of a heartbeat.

There is no fire in his chest now, and when he walks into a shadow, he knows where he begins and ends--all the more apparent from the clasp of a child’s hand in his as he guides them through his home. He doesn’t visit it often these days, but sometimes he needs to be there, despite the risks, just to see that it’s still standing.

“Careful, the swamp is that way,” Moonjumper says, following behind.

Snatcher halts, yanking the kids back by the arms when they don’t stop in time. “No way, we haven’t gone that far.”

“We’re farther than you think. You might have gotten turned around.”

“I don’t get  _ turned around _ here,” he snaps. “I  _ live _ here.” He looks around, and all he sees are endless trees, taller than he remembers. He should know, shouldn’t he? But the only eyes he sees through are his own.

“Are we lost?” Bow Kid asks.

“No.”

“Snatcher…” Moonjumper murmurs, exasperated.

He can’t be lost--not here. It would be as if he couldn’t find his own fingers. It’s a part of him,  _ is _ him, but he can’t remember what it felt like to be a part of it anymore, not even the lingering impressions in the back of his mind where words could never reach. Snatcher stands fixed in place. If he turns around now, he admits defeat. If he continues forward, he will be confronted with the unassailable truth that he did, in fact, get lost.

Hat Kid tugs his other hand. “Let’s just go that way,” she says, pulling him in a completely different direction.

Snatcher lets her tow him along like a wayward raft behind a rescuing ship. The illusion of place he had on the first half of their walk now shattered, the forest suddenly seems massive and alien, as jarring as seeing the Earth from above had been when he first boarded the spaceship.

This should be his sign, shouldn’t it? After all, on this day in particular, he came back here to find his resolve, to finally make his decision. The completed sealant still floats untouched in the dimensional inventory of the mail hat, waiting for him to commit. And yet...

“Ooh, this is a good spot!” Hat Kid announces as they enter a clearing. The clusters of glowing mushrooms grow thicker here, lighting the forest floor and glinting off the occasional patches of frost that coat parts of the rock formations on the border. A surge of relief seizes Snatcher as he recognizes where they are. Hat Kid releases his hand and runs around the clearing. “We played chase with the minions here before!”

“I remember!” Bow Kid says. She points at a depression in the ground. “Look, you can still see where Hattie threw a cherry bomb,” she tells Snatcher with a laugh. She skips after her sibling.

The imagery forces his own laugh out, despite his turbulent mood. “You’re as bad as the Subconites.”

“The dwellers are the ones who have to blow them up, so it’s not my fault!” Hat Kid shouts from the top of the tallest rock she scaled in a few hops. “We’re just helping ‘em have fun!”

“You all have gone way too long without adult supervision.”

“Psh, like you care!” Hat retorts. “You let my soul escape and get stuck in a stinky toilet!”

“Only because your soul is even worse than you!”

She sticks her tongue out, visible from across the clearing. “No way! You probably talked so much and it was so annoying that it ran away!”

Apparently attracted by the shouting, a bunch of Subconites pop out of the bushes. “Hey! You two came back!” They scatter into the clearing. “Hi Boss!”

One of the other Subconites smacks the ones who greeted him. “Shh! We’re supposed to keep it quiet!”

“Oh right…hi boss,” the chastened Subconites whisper.

Snatcher presses his face into one hand and waves at them limply with his other, shaking his head. Why does he even bother? If he wanted to evade discovery, he would have had to stay on the ship forever.

Whatever game the kids engaged in the last time they were here picks up where it left off once the Subconites arrive, and soon the clearing echoes with excited shouts. Snatcher and Moonjumper situate themselves in a sheltered outcropping to watch the antics.

“I just didn’t want you to stumble into the swamp,” Moonjumper says quietly beside him.

“It’s fine,” Snatcher says. The grasping hands had been occasional features in his nightmares early on, and of the four of them, he still is the most vulnerable to the dangers of Subcon now. He could hardly expect them not to express their concern. “I get it.”

“I-okay…”

They seem a little stung, so he tries to elaborate. “Just, I don’t want to get into it when they’re-” Snatcher gestures toward the playing children.

“I know.” Moonjumper slouches unhappily. The two of them watch the deranged game of tag developing. Hat and Bow lead the Subconites on a clumsy chase spiraling up the lower trunks of the trees. The Subconites scrabble and clamber onto the mushrooms and platforms that the kids easily traverse with their practiced acrobatics. Far up, the canopies disappear into the murky sky, a realm now beyond his reach. “You must miss it,” Moonjumper says, following the line of his gaze.

“Yeah…”

“The Time Piece…”

“The kid’s still working on the last bits.”

“But it’s almost done?”

“Yeah, should be.”

“That’s...good?” they say, as though they aren’t actually sure whether it is.

“Yeah.” He trails off as he says this, though. As he leans back, the grit of the rock he is sitting on digs into his palms, one of many persistent physical sensations. It’s taken him months, but Snatcher has slowly become practiced enough to let it wash out into the backdrop. Then again, compared to the neurotic chatter of the trees signaling to their kin through their network of roots and the tidal roar of everburning flame, this new ambience of crickets and rustling leaves is strangely quiet.

It lets new sensation flow in. Ants trot in a line over patches of moss that cover parts of the outcropping that haven’t been frosted over, noticeable now that his view is so close. The earth has a smell, something he’d long forgotten--a mix of fragrant and damp and old--that breathing in brings him back before the cellar, before the crown, to the golden-dappled days of flowers and  _ oh hellos. _ It draws tears up, involuntary.

He does miss his shadow self, misses the freedom, the power, misses the comfort of knowing his place in the world, of being connected to something bigger. But if he leans back to look, the trees stretch up, and he can, for a moment, imagine them infinitely, can sink upward into the endless dark that cradles him.

(Is he disconnected, truly?)

Snatcher’s contemplation ends abruptly when Moonjumper says, “Oh dear,” making him swing himself upright to see that Hat and Bow have started a game of trapeze-swinging by their gripshot hooks from opposing trees, trying to see if they can grab each other’s hands midswing. The Subconites cheer them on from their mushroom balconies. Moonjumper sits tense as they watch the shenanigans, threads ready to make an emergency catch. Snatcher’s eye twitches. Never any time for pondering when a couple of space brats seem hellbent on giving you a heart attack!

“You two! What the heck do you think you’re doing?”

* * *

The spaceship is alive. Well, no, not exactly, but it has cycles of its own--its heartbeat. Though its orbit around the planet means the sun shines at dissonant intervals with the normal day-night cycle of the terrestrial, every “morning,” the ship brightens the lights with the slowness of sunrise and its inhabitants rouse themselves to begin their routines.

Snatcher usually rises first, now that he’s used to sleeping and the nightmares have taken a few steps back. It gives him an interval of peace and first crack at the bathroom. Between the kids, it alternates who is next, mostly determined by who is more excited for the events of the day. He makes them all breakfast, and then half the time the two are off on some adventure with their friends planetside, and if he’s lucky, they don’t drag him along.

It’s a big ship for just the three of them, but somehow, he’s learned how to find them. When the ship thunders and shudders ominously, Snatcher finds them in the machine room, tinkering with its inner workings. Their voices carry easily when they’re in the kitchen, and the ceiling thumps from their jumping around in the attic, but when it’s quiet, it usually means they’re in the lab, focused on their experiments.

And the ship itself has its way of creaking and settling the way a house might, flexing with the minute changes in gravity as it moves through space. Snatcher has spent hours tracing an absent hand along the walls, pacing every corner. In the quiet moments, they almost seem to converse with each other. Its automated notifications chime and occasionally even speak, and he finds himself murmuring back to it sometimes. Machinery, he thinks, is not meant to be sentient. When the lights flick on in advance of his steps to welcome him through a corridor, it’s meant to be simple motion detection and code. But sometimes he wonders if the ship itself isn’t turning its gaze to him as he moves through it the same way the surprisingly empathic little cleaning robot trundles along at his heels when he tidies the bedroom and hauls the laundry down the hall.

(If he left the ship for good, would it remember him? Would he be missed?)

There’s a rhythm to the kitchen too--a microcosm within the whole of the ship. When you know a place well enough, you know the exact steps you need to cross a room, know where best to position yourself so you can  _ just _ stretch to reach that thing you need. A place so lived-in knows how to surprise you the way a new place--where you are so consciously aware of every unfamiliarity that nothing slips past your attention--never could. Snatcher has situated the cutting board that he’s manning at the practiced interval that keeps him just close enough to the sink to toss the scraps and just close enough to the range to manage the two pots going at once.

Today is his test of skill. Cooking Cat supervises from the other side of the range, with the two kids and Moonjumper watching intently, and the rude little red-hooded girl sitting on top of the table next to them. She and Cooking Cat show up three days of the week, a fixture of the routine all of their own. 

Previously, Cooking Cat locked herself in the kitchen and ran the poor stove into the ground to make the rest of the week’s food for him and the kids. Lately, though, Snatcher has been getting lessons--and relentlessly mocked by little red hood every time he burns something or messes up a measurement.

The nearer pot lets out an explosive  _ pop _ and a splatter of oil flecks the stovetop. “Agh,” Snatcher says, dropping the knife halfway through an onion and hopping over to calm the browning meat.

“Oil spatter is an occupational hazard,” Cooking Cat says brightly. “But if it bothers you, you can slide the lid over partways.”

“Are you sure you don’t want me to help?” Moonjumper asks for probably the dozenth time. They’ve hovered halfway over from their place at the table. Snatcher waves a shooing hand at them.

“You’ll get your turn next time, Moon. I got this.” His hand slips in his haste and a spoonful of it flips out of the pot. “Oh for fu-for crying out loud.”

“Hey Master Chef, I think the food’s supposed to go  _ in _ the pot, I think it cooks better like that,” Mu calls out from the kitchen table. The other two kids giggle. Snatcher curls his lip as he tosses the stray meat back in.

Cooking Cat gives Mu a sly look. “Spills are only natural. I seem to remember a whole lot of runaway food in your lessons.”

Mu crosses her arms. “It wasn’t that much. Besides, I’m a kid. I’m supposed to make messes.”

“ _ Beginners _ make messes,” says Cooking Cat, “whether they’re children or not. And so do professionals. Our work is in deliciousness, not cleanliness.” Snatcher has resumed dicing the onion, and ah great, his eyes are burning, damn it. “Give it a quick rinse, the water will settle it a bit,” Cooking Cat advises when he rears back, blinking hard.

There is...supposed to be a rhythm to this. He’s still getting the hang of it. Cooking Cat can dance between the different workstations with flawless timing, but for him…

“Hey genius, the pasta’s boiling over.”

“Ah, shit!”

“Language, Mister Snatcher!”

“Yeah,  _ Mister.  _ Language!”

“Mu, that’s enough!”

By the time he’s finished, there may be more pasta water and tomato sauce on the range surface than in the array of serving plates laid out on the table, but he  _ is _ finished. Snatcher waits nervously as the kids tuck into the first meal he’s ever cooked on his own.

Mu makes a show of sniffing at it suspiciously, but Hat and Bow apparently trust him with their lives because they attack the spaghetti immediately.

“Cookie’s is better,” Mu announces, pushing a perfectly clean plate forward.

“Cookie’s is better,” Hat Kid agrees cheekily, smirking at him. She cleaned her plate too.

“I liked it!” says Bow, diplomatically.

“Only Bow gets ice cream after,” Snatcher says, whirling around with the kitchen towel that was draped over his shoulder and going to wipe down his mess.

“Hey!” comes the duet of shouts from the other two as Bow Kid’s triumphant laugh rings off the walls. Moonjumper and Cooking Cat regard them all with amusement before joining him in the clean up.

“Not too proud to accept dishwashing assistance, are we?” says Moonjumper, tipping their head to him as they lean on the counter.

“Well, I already  _ know _ how to do the dishes, so it’s not exactly a test there, is it?” Snatcher shoots back.

“Snatcher, I didn’t mean it, I liked the spaghetti too,” Hat Kid whines, prodding him in the side.

“Hm, maybe if you’re extra nice to Bow, she’ll share some of hers with you,” he says grimly.

“You can’t hold ice cream out on us,” Mu says, tugging on his sleeve from the other side. “It’s not fair!” She turns to the other adults. “Whose side are you on anyway?”

Cooking Cat chuckles as she dries the dishes Snatcher hands off to her. “It’s not our house, sweetheart. I don’t make the rules.” Considering how he has been banned from the kitchen before, Snatcher silently begs to differ. 

Once they finish the washing, he gets out three bowls and scoops ice cream into each of them. He glances over at the hopeful eyes of Hat and Mu and clicks his tongue. “Nope, sorry, these are all for Bow.”

“What! Snatcherrrr!”

“Come on! What’s the point?”

Snatcher holds them out of their reach with exaggerated solemnity. “Nope, all three bowls belong to her. She gets to decide what to do with them, not me.” As promised, he deposits them in front of Bow Kid and gives her a wink.

“You can have some, don’t worry,” Bow whispers at Hat and Mu who have attached themselves to her shoulders. She pushes one bowl each to them.

The kids finish their ice cream even faster than their dinner and promptly begin a debate about what dessert is objectively the best. While they bicker, Cooking Cat delivers her professional feedback on the dish--pasta a bit overdone, of course, and not quite zealous enough with the seasoning.

“It’s much harder to overdo it than under,” she says. “But overall you did wonderfully! I can’t wait to try your next meal!”

Snatcher glances at Moonjumper then down at his hands, flexes all five fingers down the line. Is there a point to all this, he wonders. Even once they finish the Time Piece, does he just stop? Hanging from hooks on the cabinet are the kids’ mugs plus his. There’s a section in the wardrobe for him and a third beanbag chair in the reading corner. The ship recognizes his voice, and Rumbi follows him around, and the kids…

The kids catch his eye and give him a grin, lips still stained with ice cream. The kids will want their bedtime story, won’t they?

_ Memory is just encoded time, _ Bow Kid once told him. He has written himself into the code of this place, this home. If they reset the Time Piece, is he unwritten like a fading dream? Or does the imprint of himself continue to haunt the memory of the ship, leave him divided between his two worlds? 

Without any intention, he has put down the very beginnings of roots. The kids have pulled him into orbit, yes, but gravity pulls both ways.

(Does a place become alive because you know it? And because it knows you?)

* * *

Luka is alive. The man he thought he’d lost. The man he’d always been. He got so caught up seeing himself as a puppet, tottering around on tangled strings that he missed the point when the gap between them closed. He understands now that this body is not his prison nor a vessel he inhabits--this body  _ is _ him. He inhabits every space of it, no longer rattles around like a loose soul in a hollow, mindless shell. 

He is awakened by a child burrowing her way toward him under his blanket, catching at his arm and pulling herself toward him. The puff of her hair tickles him as she shivers, clinging to him under the covers.

“What’sa matter kiddo?” he whispers, his dry mouth still sticking to itself after waking up so suddenly. Nearby, Hat Kid snoozes, burritoed in her blanket on the pillow stack.

The shaking lump under the blanket responds with a sniffle. Snatcher shifts himself into a more comfortable position causing the blanket to spill off his shoulders and reveal Bow Kid’s curls poking out. He maneuvers his arm from her grip and wraps it around her instead. 

“You gonna hang out here?” he asks through a yawn. Bow nods. “Okay.”

He yawns again, feeling the cool air tingle on his tongue, and he snaps his mouth shut, shaking his head. “Chilly, huh?” he mutters. Bow Kid nods again.

He cranes his head back to examine their orbital position. Currently, they’re floating on the night side of Earth, the sun almost fully eclipsed by the planet. Barely any of the normal glow shines through the bedroom window. No wonder.

Another sniffle, and finally his brain catches up. She’s crying. Cold doesn’t normally make people cry, except, hah, except him, but that’s only because...oh. Hold on.

“Bad dream?” he asks.

“Mhm,” replies the tiny voice.

“Ah, yeah, I get that.” Snatcher tucks the blanket tighter around them both. “Don’t worry, kiddo. She can’t get us in space.”

This seems to settle her a bit because she stops trembling so much and loosens her grip just a little. “You still get nightmares too?” she says.

“Oh yeah. All the time.”

“Really? But...I never know.”

“Heh. I don’t  _ tell _ you about them.”

“What do you do then?”

He shrugs. “Usually just go back to sleep.” If it’s really bad, he calls Moonjumper--one of the benefits of having a sleepless spirit on hand.

“Aren’t you scared of the nightmare coming back?”

That was a bigger problem in the beginning, when his mind was still reeling from the shock of existing physically again and struggling to cope with all the sensations that came with it. In the same way he has memorized the sounds and motion of Subcon, of the spaceship, he has started to learn this body too. “Sometimes, yeah. But I try to remind myself I’m here where it’s safe.” He curls himself tighter around her, trying to make himself more solid, more real for her. She lacks the bravado of her sibling, content to hide a step behind. It used to make him nuts, but now he just wants to be her shelter, give her the space to see how brave she can be.

“I don’t know if that’ll work,” Bow says. “I mean, I know I’m safe when I’m awake, but when I go to sleep, I can’t make myself remember.”

“You probably need a distraction,” Snatcher says. He pokes her nose, and she scrunches her face up. “Problem is, you’re all worked up, see? You just need something to get you tired again.”

“Maybe a book?”

In the darkness, only the edges of shadows are visible. “I’m going to have to turn on a light. Might wake up Hat,” he tells her.

“Oh. You’re right,” she says glumly.

Snatcher turns around again, looking out at the expanse of space. In the dimmer light, the stars beyond the solar system twinkle brighter than usual. “They ever teach you anything about stars in time school?”

Bow giggles, a little nasally since her nose is still stuffed. “It’s not called time school. And yeah, duh! We have to know about astronomy for flying spaceships.”

“Semantics,” Snatcher mutters. “So what about these?” He points out the stars winking over the Earth. “You know ‘em?”

She peeks her head over his shoulder, until he laughs under his breath and turns them both around to face the window properly. “I can’t tell. Maybe? It all looks so different from here,” she says.

“Heh, I’m used to seeing it from the ground so let’s see how  _ I _ do.” He peers at the distant stars, trying to get his bearings. “Ah, there’s the Big Dipper.” He traces the shape of the constellation with his finger.

“Where?” Bow emerges from the blanket as she leans forward to see.

“Over the horizon. The thing that looks like a shovel. Or a spoon.”

Bow’s head swivels slightly as she searches. “What, that thing? That doesn’t look like a shovel.”

“Or a spoon?”

“Not a spoon either.”

“Well, what do you think it looks like then?”

“Maybe a pot. Or a hat upside-down.”

Snatcher snorts. “A  _ hat? _ Tch. Of course you would think of a hat.”

“Yeah, look, the long part is the brim and the rectangle is the hat part.”

“Kind of a weird hat, hm?”

“It’s a weirder shovel,” she drawls.

It’s hard to identify most of the stars, especially with the planet rolling into view with each passing second. Snatcher only manages to point out a couple more that really stand out. Eventually Bow Kid’s sock-covered feet slide out from the cover of the blankets, and she wiggles them back and forth as he teaches her the few things he remembers about space from an Earth perspective.

“What’re you guys doing?” Hat Kid rasps from their side. They both turn and see her squinting at them with crinkled eyes.

“Sorry, Hattie, were we too noisy?” Bow Kid asks.

“Probably just Snatcher and his super loud whispering.” Hat Kid crawls on all fours toward them, her own blanket riding with her like a turtle shell. She pushes her way onto the other side of Snatcher’s lap next to Bow Kid.

“Wow, you insult me and then sit on me. You got some nerve, kid,” he says, draping the blanket around her too.

“Yup.” Hat Kid yawns and snuggles up against Bow’s shoulder. “So why’re you up?”

“I dreamt about...the manor,” Bow whispers, cupping a hand around her mouth, as if she’s worried Vanessa might hear.

“Oh,” Hat says with understanding. They’re all silent for a while, and the kids seem to individually contemplate nightmares. After months of dealing with them, the truly visceral ones have become less frequent, and by now they’ve entered the territory of frustration more than anything--spasming awake in the middle of the night again and talking his own mind out of its panic, groaning with the realization that it’ll be a while before sleepiness overtakes the fear. By now, it’s old hat (a-hah).

“So kid, what do  _ you _ think that constellation looks like?”

“Hmm. A hat, but like turned over.”

Bow bounces triumphantly. “See! I told you!”

Hat turns around to him. “Wait, what did you think it looks like?”

“He said a shovel.”

“A  _ shovel? _ You’re crazy!”

He shakes his head. “You two are impossible.”

Of course they back each other up perfectly. They’re all each other has, not only in the world, but possibly the galaxy. He knows the safety of holding someone close, guarding against the void; he knows the swallowing emptiness of standing in the darkness alone. How many nightmares have these two weathered together, no one else to protect them? 

The three of them bicker some more about what the stars actually look like. Survey results include kite, snake, spider, messed up spider, and television.

“Well, there we have it. The new Earth constellations,” Snatcher announces. As the minutes tick by, the ship’s orbit carries them away from the field of stars and the window now overlooks the Earth where dawn appears to be approaching planetside.

“Hey Snatcher?” Hat Kid’s voice is still fuzzy with sleepiness after not speaking for a while.

“Yeah, kiddo?” There’s a long pause, and he cranes his head forward to check if she didn’t fall asleep.

“Can we still...after the Time Piece gets fixed, are we gonna still hang out like this?”

His breath catches. “Y-yeah, kiddo. Why wouldn’t we?”

She shrugs. “We didn’t used to.”

...They didn’t, did they? Not like this. But that’s not what she’s asking either. Words within words. After all this time with them, he’s starting to speak their language. The question is, who is he now?

No, that’s not it either.

He is Snatcher, and Snatcher is Luka, and Luka is him. This has always been him. The real question is, who does he want to become?

The blanket is soft around them, and while he’s holding the little ones close, the cold can’t touch him. Will he remember this feeling? Or will it fade away just as quickly as it came crashing back in when the Time Piece first broke? Will the marks he left on this place, in this life wash way, piece by piece like sand in the tides of time?

The thought strikes him like lightning: he does not want to be a ghost in their life. He doesn’t want the days to skip past him in timeless eternity, doesn’t want the resounding noise of existence to become unnoticeable background, doesn’t want to go back to not noticing the details, to not paying attention. 

The echoes of Subcon still ache in his chest in the hollowed places where its chorusing presence once burrowed. But there are other roots snaking into the spaces left behind, and growing into the corners of himself like moss are the sounds of wind through treetops in a space far above and the ringing of crickets. Subcon after all, whether he feels its magic burning within or loses his way stumbling on two feet in the embrace of its shadows, has always and ever will be home. Maybe, he can relearn it, the way he learned it before.

(Maybe love is learning and relearning, again and again. And maybe home is not a place but a feeling. There was never a going back, not really. You’re never the same for loving something--someone. You’re never the same for them loving you. Gravity pulls both ways.)

“The Time Piece,” Snatcher says. The kids perk up. “You...you don’t have to rush it.”

“Really?” Hat Kid asks, something bubbling in the undertones of her voice. “But, I thought...what about changing back?”

“I...just don’t worry about it too much, alright? I think...I don’t mind sticking around for a little bit longer.”

Bow Kid chances a peek at him. “You really mean it?”

“Yeah.” Snatcher realizes as he says it. “I do.”


End file.
